SC - Aaaaagh!!! (was Haggis)

[James Gilly / Alasdair mac Iain]

Sorry about the long delay here - I've been at sea for the last couple
weeks, and life was more than usually hectic the last few weeks before
that.  However....

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HAGGIS

     Walk into any butcher's shop in Scotland and ask how many pounds of
haggis they make in a week - you will be astonished.  And this, for every
week of the year; not just at the national festivals of St Andrew's Day and
Burns' night when demand often outstrips supply and butchers are frequently
sold out by the end of the morning.  If the desire for haggis is strong at
home, it becomes an obsession for exiled Scots who have vast quantities
air-freighted to all parts of the globe for these two nights of the year.
     Ny first haggis-making exploits were as a student when the whole
process took the best part of a day to complete.  The raw Sheep's Pluck*,
while not a pretty sight, didn't worry me at all but the windpipe hanging
over the side of the pot which the whole pluck was cooking in, quietly
disgorging the blood and other impurities from the lungs into a jar which
we had placed on the cooker, did not appeal.  It was about ten years before
I had another go, when I was working in a hotel which bought whole sheep
and as the plucks started filling up the precious deep freeze space,
prompted by necessity, I got out my old Haggis recipe in *The Glasgow
Cookery Book* (John Smith, Glasgow, Revised Edition, 1962).
     It is a traditional recipe which most butchers will tell you is
basically what they work from, though no two of them will produce the same
haggis.  Variations are secret and have been developed over many years
testing the Scottish palate for preferences.  Haggis lovers have very
definite ideas about the best qualities of haggis and a competition is held
each year to find the best butcher's haggis.

* A Sheep's Pluck is the part of the animal which has been 'plucked' out of
the belly and includes the liver, heart and lungs which are all joined
together with the windpipe at one end.

     Qualities of a good Haggis
     The flavour is a matter of taste, with some liking it spicy and 'hot'
with plenty of pepper, while others prefer a milder flavour with more herbs
than spices.  Relative proportions of meat to oatmeal, suet and onions also
depend on individual preferences as does the type of offal used.  Some
butchers will use ox liver because their customers prefer the flavour,
while others stick to the traditional sheep's - there are all kinds of
ermutations which make haggis eating something of an adventure.
     More a question of quality, the meat should have no tough gristly bits
sometimes found in a badly-made haggis and the texture should be moist and
firm, rather than dry and crumbly.


Traditional method
     1 sheep's bag and pluck
     4 oz/125 g suet, finely chopped (1 c)
     4 medium onions, finely chopped
     1/2 lb/250 g pinhead oatmeal (2 c)
     2-4 tablespoons salt
     1 level teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
     1 level teaspoon dries mixed herbs (2 for fresh)

Preparing the pluck and bag
     Wash the bag in cold water, scrape and clean well.  Leave overnight in
cold water.  Wash the pluck and put it ina pan of boiling water.  Let the
windpipe lie over the side of the pot and have a small jar underneath to
catch the drips.  Simmer gently till all are tender - this depends on the
age of the animal but is usually between one and two hours.  Place the
cooked pluck in a large basin, cover with the liquid which it was boiled in
and leave overnight.

Making the Haggis
(The next day)
     Toast the oatmeal in the oven till thoroughly dried-out but not
browned.  Cut off the windpipe, trim away all skin and black parts.  Chop
or mince the heart and lungs, grate the liver.  Add the oatmeal, salt,
pepper, herbs and about 1 pt/1/2 L (2 1/2 c) of the liquid the pluck was
boiled in.  Mix well, fill the bag rather more than half full of the
ixture.  Press out the air, sew up and prick with a long needle.  Place in
boiling water, simmer for 3 hours, pricking again when it swells.  The bag
may be cut into several pieces to make smaller haggis in which case cook
for only 1 1/2-2 hours.
     Serve hot with 'tatties' - Creamed Potatoes flavoured with nutmeg (see
p. 181); 'neeps' - Mashed Turnip flavoured with allspice (see p. 194) and a
good blended whisky.


Other ways of serving
     'Haggis meat, by those who cannot admire the natural shape,' says Meg
Dods, 'may be poured out of the bag, and *served in a deep dish*.  No dish
heats up better.'  It is also a very practical way of serving haggis to
large numbers provided it is well covered to prevent drying out.  Knobs of
butter dotted over the top surface are a good idea.  Slices of haggis can
be grilled, fried or wrapped in foil and baked in the oven with a bit of
butter on top.  The slices can be served as part of a Mixed Grill or for
breakfast with bacon and egg.  It is very good fried and served simply with
fried onions or with an onion sauce lightly flavoured with whisky.  I have
had a slice of fried haggis served in a roll and described as a
'Haggisburger'.  It was served with a whisky-flavoured chutney and was an
excellent snack.  It can also be used with mince in a Shepherd's Pie.
     Provided you are careful about the dominating flavour it can be used
as a stuffing.  It should not be used with delicately-flavoured meat like
chicken unless it is a very mild haggis.  Other ingredients can be added to
the haggis such as nuts or cooked rice.  Mixing in a little tomato sauce
(see p. 257) can work well.
     An Edinburgh butcher, well-known for his quality haggis, Charles
MacSween has recently made a vegetarian haggis with an excellent flavour
which is proving popular.  It has a variety of vegetables, spices, oatmeal
and brown rice.
     Perhaps the most unusual idea is that of serving cold haggis.  Some
years ago I met a chef whose local butcher made such a good haggis that he
served a slice of it cold with hot toast as a starter course.  It seemed
that he used pork fat and meat rather than suet along with a delicate
combination of herbs and spices with excellent results.
     Variations in other recipes include adding the juice of a lemon or a
little 'good vinegar'.  Even flavouring with cayenne pepper.  Quantities of
oatmeal and suet vary a lot with up to 2 lb/1 kg oatmeal and 1 lb/500 g
suet to a singlepluck.  Some are boiled for up to 6 hours.  Meg Dods says
that, 'A finer haggis may be made by parboiling and skinning sheep's
tongues and kidneys, and substituting these minced, for most ot the lights,
and soaked bread or crisped crumbs for the toasted meal.'  For those who
can't face a whole pluck she also says that the parboiled minced meat from
a sheep's head can be used for haggis.


Origins of Haggis Pudding
     Like pies, puddings have always been made with a collection of
miscellaneous ingredients; the one under a pie crust, the other boiled in
the stomach bag of an animal.  The term 'pudding' came from the habit in
15th and 16th centuries of referring to the entrails of animals and men as
'puddings'.
     Pudding Lane in London is thought to have derived its name, not from
an association with edible puddings, but because 'the butchers of Eastcheap
have their scalding-houses for hogs there, and their puddings, with other
filth of beasts, are voided down that way to their Dung-boats on the Thames.'
     From the 15th century to about the 18th century, recipes for early
puddings are closely connected with something called a 'Haggis' or 'Haggas'
pudding.  The general principle involved the use of the stomach bag with a
filling of the cooked entrails plus some other ingredients.  15th-century
recipes use the liver and the blood of the sheep, while later recipes in
the 17th century. referring to making a 'Haggas Pudding in the Sheep's
Paunch' use a wider variety of ingredients - parsley, savoury, thyme,
onions, beef, suet, oatmeal, cloves, mace, pepper and salt, sewn up and
boiled; served with a hole cut in the top and filled with butter melted
with two or three eggs.  Another recipe uses a calve's paunch* and the
entrails minced together with grated bread, yolks of eggs, cream, spices,
dried fruits and herbs, served as a sweet with sugar and almonds; while yet
another recipe uses oatmeal steeped and boiled, mixed with spices, raisins,
onions and herbs.
     Although the derivation is obscure, some etymologists claim that the
term may have been transferred from the now obsolete name for a magpie
which was 'Haggiss' or 'Haggess'.  A medieval comparison may have been
drawn between the magpie's habit of collecting and forming an accumulation
of varied articles and the same general principle applied instead to
ingredients for the pudding.  This analogy is carried even further, with
the unproven theory that another early word for the magpie may be
responsible for the word 'pie' since at one time the magpie was known as a
'maggot-pie' or a 'Margaret-pie' or even simply as a 'pie'.
     Whether the habits of the magpie had anything to do with what we know
to-day as puddings and pies, the Haggis pudding has a British rather than a
Scottish pedigree with the English making Haggis well into the 18th
century.  The Scots' deeply rooted instincts, bred by centuries of
surviving at poverty levels, to use up all the odds and ends of an animal
seems to me the best reason why we have continued to make it.  The fact
that we actually still like to eat it is proof enough of its virtue.

* Baxters of Fochabers made one of the largest Haggis, weighing 170 lb, by
stuffing the mixture into the interior of two cows' stomachs which had been
sewn together


[*Scottish Cookery*, by Catherine Brown, pp 147-150.  Copyright 1989
Catherine Brown.  First published 1985; new edition 1989; reprinted 1990.
Richard Drew Publishing Ltd, Glasgow.]

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Alasdair mac Iain



Laird Alasdair mac Iain of Elderslie
Dun an Leomhain Bhig
Canton of Dragon's Aerie [southeastern CT]
Barony Beyond the Mountain  [northern & southeastern CT]
East Kingdom
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Argent, a chevron cotised azure surmounted by a sword and in chief two
mullets sable
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